S. Koreans mourn president who committed suicide

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is juggling competing crises: the suicide of his predecessor and an increasingly belligerent North Korea.

South Korea has been in mourning since the shocking death Saturday of former President Roh Moo-hyun, a liberal who was recently questioned in a bribery probe that some supporters claim was politically motivated by conservatives — led by Lee.

With the investigation deepening, the 62-year-old Roh — who prided himself on being a "clean" politician and denied the allegations — threw himself off a cliff behind his southern home.

The funeral for Roh, whose death triggered a wave of grief in the nation of 49 million, is being held today in Seoul.

Two days after Roh's death, with the nation still reeling, Lee faced a full-blown national security crisis when communist rival North Korea tested a nuclear bomb underground for the second time in less than three years.

The regime followed that with a series of short-range missile tests, and Wednesday renounced the truce that the two Koreas signed at the close of the Korean War.

Fifteen months into his presidency, Lee has been hit by "trouble both at home and abroad," said Hahm Sung-deuk, an expert on South Korean politics at Korea University in Seoul.

The twin difficulties pose an "enormous crisis" for Lee, he said.

North Korea's nuclear test was the culmination of a steady deterioration in relations between the two Koreas since Lee started his five-year term in February last year.

He swept into office in a landslide, making promises of faster economic growth and vowing to get tough with the North by linking aid and concessions to progress in the country's denuclearization.

That angered Pyongyang. Inter-Korean relations had blossomed under Roh and his fellow liberal predecessor, the former dissident Kim Dae-jung; Both had pursued detente with Pyongyang and held summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Pyongyang's belligerence is a sign that relations between the two Koreas are in serious trouble and indicate Seoul's growing loss of influence with the North, said Kim Hyung-joon, a political science professor at Myongji University in Seoul.

"North Korea appears to have concluded that there is nothing it can get from South Korea, and conducted its latest nuclear test to show it is a force to be reckoned with as a way to eventually have direct negotiations with the U.S.," Kim said.

Roh's death, however, may be the harder of the two to navigate, given the intensity of emotions it has generated among the late leader's supporters and a South Korean political culture that stresses conflict over compromise and recrimination over respect.

To be sure, the outpouring of grief has covered the entire political spectrum. For days, South Koreans, many weeping, have converged on special sites set up nationwide to pay their respects by offering single white chrysanthemums and prostrating themselves, both traditional gestures of mourning.

"I am a housewife who does not really know about politics," said Choi Sun-kyu, speaking through tears at a mourning site in Seoul, crumpled tissues beside her on a bench. "But I know that former President Roh did so much for our country. He was the only president who cared so much about the people."

Roh served as president from 2003-2008, a tumultuous time in the country's politics that saw him impeached in 2004 by the National Assembly over an election violation but reinstated to office two months later by the Constitutional Court. He pushed for closer relations with North Korea and occasionally clashed with the United States.

After leaving office, his hopes to pursue a simple life in his rural hometown were dashed by prosecutors investigating allegations that he and family members received $6 million from a South Korean businessman. The allegations were a blow to his pride.

Anguish has been most intense among Roh's devoted supporters. His family's spokesman, Cheon Ho-seon, called the investigation "political revenge" exacted by prosecutors and the current government.

Some have vented their anger and frustration at Lee, with one note posted at a mourning site in Seoul calling him a "murderer." Supporters hurled eggs and doused water on Prime Minister Han Seung-soo and other top conservative political leaders trying to visit the mourning site in Roh's hometown.

"This is political murder," said Kim Seung-ho, a mourner in central Seoul. Roh "was our best president in history, and look what the bloody government did to him."

Lee's office said it had no official comment on such accusations.

The president has conveyed "profound sorrow" to Roh's family over his death and the government is working with it to organize a "people's funeral."

Authorities, however, fueled anger by initially blocking access to a central Seoul mourning site with riot control buses out of an apparent fear that the public outpouring might morph into anti-government protests. Last year, near-daily street rallies over Lee's decision to resume imports of U.S. beef paralyzed the government.

The buses were later removed, but police continued to block access to a nearby plaza, a focal point for last year's demonstrations. Upon leaving the mourning site, people were asked to sign a petition to impeach the president.

"Lee lost an opportunity to embrace his political opponents," said Kim Ho-ki, a social science professor at Seoul's Yonsei University. He predicted that the failure will become "a political burden" going forward.

Concerns that Roh's death could become a focal point for division come in a political culture that has had difficulty mastering compromise. Corruption investigations of former presidents or members of their families and aides have been common.

South Korea became a full-fledged democracy in 1987, when massive street demonstrations forced the country's then-military-backed strongman to allow direct presidential elections.

But political tensions between the government and opposition are intense and sometimes spill over into actual violence. The National Assembly has seen its share of fistfights between lawmakers over the years.

"Whoever leads Korea will be faced with the same problem of disagreement by a substantial minority," former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Thursday during a visit to Seoul. "So that is why you see a lot of turbulence in Korean politics."

Korea University's Hahm said Lee should replace the country's top prosecutor and justice minister to ease tensions. Prosecutor-General Lim Chai-jin, citing his "personal agony," offered to resign after hearing news of Roh's death, but Justice Minister Kim Kyung-han rejected the offer. Lim was appointed as the country's top prosecutor by Roh in 2007 and was retained by Lee.

Roh himself seems to have anticipated the possible divisions his death would bring, and may ultimately help Lee ride out the storm.

In a suicide note, he described his anguish over the probe. But he asked South Koreans to avoid recriminations over his death.

"Don't blame anybody," he urged them. "It's destiny."

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